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Beets: The music geek’s media organizer

beets.io

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Re: Beets: The music geek’s media organizer

#71

Post by iamacyborg »

criddell wrote: post #56
mrmekon wrote: post #28

I spent a truly obnoxious amount of time importing my music library into beets. It took a couple of weeks to get to 95% imported, and got so bogged down in the last 5% that I never completed the import and never switched over. This isn't necessarily a fault with beets, really, but a model mismatch. The model of beets is very, very strongly tied to associating each imported item to one well-known, commercial release.…

I've always struggled to get my classical CDs tagged in a way that makes sense to me. Apple has figured it out in their classical music app and I should probably see if I can copy what they did in my personal library.

Maybe worth looking at Roon for that? It’s not free but they handle classical music very well.

Re: Beets: The music geek’s media organizer

#72

Post by sparky_z »

Thev00d00 wrote: post #31

A few people commenting that some of their collection "doesn't exist in any DB", the best way to fix it is to add it to Musicbrainz[0] yourself! I have found that adding things to Musicbrainz is actually pretty easy (and if you are so inclined like me, pretty rewarding and fun). Streaming releases (and Bandcamp) you simply drop the release URL into Harmony[1] and it does most of the work for you. Musicbrainz can repr…

You're still assuming that all of a person's music metadata _belongs_ in a global database. Some of my collection includes:

-"frankenstein" musical soundtracks where I've assembled my favorite version of each song from all the various published recordings. Sometimes I've even edited pieces of different recordings together into a hybrid track. -a soundboard recording of my friend's high school talent show performance -Music I've personally recorded from video games or other random sources -Songs where I've edited out parts I don't like (such as overly-long drum solos) leaving just the parts I do.

I've organized these things in a way that makes sense for me, not for the world.

This is like a bookshelf that can only store books with an ISBN that can be classified in the Dewey decimal system. Too bad about your family photo scrapbooks or your personal sketchbooks!

Re: Beets: The music geek’s media organizer

#74

Post by Shorel »

embedding-shape wrote: post #41
Shorel wrote: post #39

I organize everything into Mixxx. It is tagged not only by genre, crates, some songs belong into more than one crate. Also by mood, which I tag with colours. And how much I like the song, which is by stars. I tried Beets and it was very underwhelming in comparison =)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but different target users here :) Beets seems to be for consumers who want to organize their music collection, and while Mixxx can help with that too, it's mainly for music connoisseurs who play for others (AKA DJs). I'm not sure how well someone looking for the first could use Mixxx, the interface isn't exactly the epitome of user-friendliness if you just wanna organize then press play :)

You are correct in your appreciation.

Mixxx is best used with a DJ console, however for me it is also easily used as a player that automatically picks a song from some selected crates in Auto DJ mode.

So I'm in the mood for Salsa, I put that crate as the AutoDJ source.

Later I can change it to progressive rock, or 90's disco, and it will randomly pick songs from the selected crate or crates.

I can also do DJ things, like looping some sections or mashup some songs.

Re: Beets: The music geek’s media organizer

#75

Post by timcobb »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #59

(Only because I have an axe to grind) I really dislike "genre" and work hard to strip that metadata tag. It is so reductive. And flawed as well. Do we assign a "genre" to an artist? Album? Song? The band R.E.M.: "College Rock"? "New Wave"? "Alternative"? (Wow, don't even get me started on all the ways you can further slice up "alternative" into "shoe-gaze", "twee", etc. It's, ha ha, naval gazing for the music intelli…

Same, glad to know I'm not alone!

Re: Beets: The music geek’s media organizer

#76

Post by robinhood »

Beets is amazing. The fact that it exists is a blessing for those like us who maintain our own music library.

I've been wanting to build my own Plex alternative for a while now. I've tried all the other tools out there, but Plex is definitely the least bad tool that let me enjoy my music without subscribing to Spotify and others.

I've already spent hours trying to figure out all the things that are required to make this new system. And it's unbelievably complicated. From parsing metadata to converting music, to understanding how deep and complex tagging work for music (yeah, it doesn't sound like it at first, but it truly is infinitely complex), I'm overwhelmed by how hard it would be to build a tool that compete with a combination of beets/iTunes.

Re: Beets: The music geek’s media organizer

#77

Post by yard2010 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #59

(Only because I have an axe to grind) I really dislike "genre" and work hard to strip that metadata tag. It is so reductive. And flawed as well. Do we assign a "genre" to an artist? Album? Song? The band R.E.M.: "College Rock"? "New Wave"? "Alternative"? (Wow, don't even get me started on all the ways you can further slice up "alternative" into "shoe-gaze", "twee", etc. It's, ha ha, naval gazing for the music intelli…

King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard

Genre: Yes

Re: Beets: The music geek’s media organizer

#79

Post by zdw »

sparky_z wrote: post #72
Thev00d00 wrote: post #31

A few people commenting that some of their collection "doesn't exist in any DB", the best way to fix it is to add it to Musicbrainz[0] yourself! I have found that adding things to Musicbrainz is actually pretty easy (and if you are so inclined like me, pretty rewarding and fun). Streaming releases (and Bandcamp) you simply drop the release URL into Harmony[1] and it does most of the work for you. Musicbrainz can repr…

You're still assuming that all of a person's music metadata _belongs_ in a global database. Some of my collection includes: -"frankenstein" musical soundtracks where I've assembled my favorite version of each song from all the various published recordings. Sometimes I've even edited pieces of different recordings together into a hybrid track. -a soundboard recording of my friend's high school talent show performance…

I'm not sure that's what the earlier poster ment.

What I think they're doing (and what I've done) is add music that wasn't already in the global database to it. For example, a promotional CD, or releases from a small publisher, etc.

In these cases, you're not adding personal metadata or mixtapes.

That said, definitely do self organization if it works for you. Most of your examples seem like they're suitable for custom playlists.

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